EXCLUSIVE: GEORGE IS BEST IGNORED

TURN him into the nobody he really is says ex-wife Angie.

SHE lived with George Best for eight rollercoaster years and raised their son single-handedly while his boozing and partying spiralled out of control.

Angie Best thought she had seen the alcoholic football legend hit rock bottom during their marriage, which ended in 1986. So she is horrified at the "seedy drunken bum" with a "death wish" she believes he has turned into.

Today, as he staggers from one booze-fuelled disaster to another, his first wife has some sobering advice for George - and for the people who still hero-worship him.

"England as a nation has put him on a little puffy feather mattress and said, 'Oh, we love you, George. You can do no wrong'," says Angie, 52. "Well it's time to change.

"We should completely ignore him. He'll be so unhappy if we do that. Instead of pushing your kids in front of him as you're walking down the street or asking for an autograph, ignore him. Turn him into the nobody he really is."

Angie, whose son by George is 24-year-old Celebrity Love Island star Calum, fears that her ex is on a road to self-destruction that he can't get off.

In the last month, 59-year-old Best has had a bust-up with girlfriend Ros Hollidge, which left them both battered and bruised. He's become homeless. He's been accused of indecently assaulting a girl under the age of 13 at her home in May and of assaulting a woman - claims he denies.

"It's too late to help George now," says Essex-born Angie, whose accent is still evident even though she left Southend to run fitness clubs in Beverly Hills at the age of 19.

"Britain as a nation has grown up seeing him more as a stupidly-behaving drunk than a really good soccer player.

"Say your prayers because there's nothing you can do to help him. He'll just be a seedy old man who wastes away."

She is not the only one who has given up on George.

His millionaire friend Stephen Purdew - who offered him a safe haven at Forest Mere health farm in Liphook, Hampshire for the last two years - has also reached the end of his tether.

He kicked him out, calling him "a stumbling pathetic drunk".

Angie says, "George needs to see a shrink to find out what is driving this death wish of his.

"When I I was with him it wasn't anywhere near as bad. He wasn't seedy, banal and disgusting as he is now. He was young, virile, handsome, black-haired, blue-eyed and gorgeous.

"I thought he just needed to have his dinner cooked for him every night and have a reason to come home. I didn't know enough about alcoholism.

W HEN he's drunk he has blackouts when he doesn't remember what he's done or where he's been. He has no control over himself."

She is amazed that, knowing his history, young women like Ros Hollidge, 37, Lisa Pesch, 23, and Gina Devivo, 35, have embarked on relationships with him.

"Tell me, darling, what decent woman in her right mind wants a drunken bum who obviously doesn't smell very good because his liver doesn't work properly?" says Angie, who has been with her 42-year-old boyfriend Mark for 11 years. "His mouth must be full of rotten teeth, his face puffy. He's toxic."

Men also put him on a pedestal. When it comes to discussing her ex, Angie insists on talking to a female journalist, saying, "Whenever I talk to men about George they just want to know about his football and drinking. It doesn't matter what he does, men are so sycophantic he can do no wrong."

She met George 30 years ago when he was playing for the Los Angeles Aztecs soccer team. They got married in Las Vegas in 1978.

She adds, "When I used to try to drag George out of pubs, to take him home to sober up, men would push me out of the way, saying, 'Come on, George. Let's have another bottle of champagne'.

"I feel sad for the men who've idolised him for 50 years - they got him all wrong.

"Just because he knew how to kick a ball doesn't mean he knew how to be a decent man."

She last spoke to George four years ago, when she rang to tell him she had written her book, George & Me. He was furious.

Like most people, Angie thought that George had turned a corner when he had a life-saving liver transplant three years ago.

"That was when I encouraged Calum to go to England and be with his dad," she says. "I thought we'd have a new George. I thought we'd have somebody who would do something for society and open his own soccer schools, rather than someone who is known for being an excellent soccer player 30 years ago.

"How about being an excellent human being? That seems to have slipped George's grasp. He is making the choice to stay drunk and that really p***** me off. It's a waste of a human being that I dearly loved.

"All the things that David Beckham is doing, George could have done. But George chose to jump head-first into the bottle and now he can't get out. He'll just be a seedy old drunk who wastes away.

I T'S the saddest thing in the world - especially when he's got such a wonderful son who would love to grow old with him."

Angie, who was a personal trainer to Cher and Sharon Stone and now runs her own health and beauty business, went through her own rocky phase with drink. It was when her eight-year marriage to George broke down in 1986, when Calum was five.

"I was back in England where I hadn't lived for years," she says. "I had no friends and knew nobody. I was miserable so I would have three or four glasses of champagne and go to bed with a hangover. Then one day I thought, 'Enough of this self-indulgence. You've got a life to get on with'."

After they split up, Angie would befriend each of George's girlfriends - including Miss World Mary Stavin and Angie MacDonald James and his second wife Alex Best.

"I would make sure that the girls knew to look after my boy when he came to visit," she explains. "I couldn't have an ego. I had to put my child first. I didn't want to turn Calum against his father so I never said anything bad about him. He's still got that glimmer of hope that his dad is going to turn out to be the dad he should be.

"When Calum went to England each year to see his father, if he didn't go down the pub he wouldn't see him. George has had one year of sobriety in Calum's 24 years of life. He has grown up seeing what drinking does and how disgusting it is."

Even so, she must be worried about her model son being a chip off the old block. After all, Calum likes a drink and his sexual adventures are headline news. His canoodling in the toilet with Rebecca Loos on Celebrity Love Island prompted a "Did they? Didn't they?" debate. And in February he was caught on CCTV in an intimate clinch with Lizzie Jagger in a nightclub door.

"I blank that stuff out," says Angie. "What mother wants to hear about her son cavorting around in public? I just have to keep my fingers crossed that his upbringing gets the better of him.

"I don't mention it because I like to think I'm a place where he can come when he wants to talk and doesn't get judged, nagged or told off.

"It was just us for 18 years so we're very close. None of this is worth arguing over because he will be a different boy in a couple of years and I don't want any of this to spoil our relationship."

She last saw her son two years ago when did a TV show in England, but she calls Calum every day.

"I'd love him to be a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant," says Angie. "To marry a nice girl, have 2.5 kids and look after me when I'm older.

"But it's not his path. It's an inevitable part of being George's son."